Bret Michaels Rushed to ICU with Brain Hemorrhage

Bret Michaels’s health has taken a turn for the worse, PEOPLE has learned: After an excruciating headache late Thursday night, the star was rushed to an undisclosed hospital where doctors discovered he suffered a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding at the base of his brain stem), according to a source close to the situation.

Michaels, 47, is currently in critical condition. “After several CAT scans, MRIs and an angiogram, [doctors] decided to keep Michaels in the ICU and are running several tests to determine the cause. [It] will be touch and go for the next few days while he is under intense observation,” the source says.

Rate this:

Related

Comments

Sounding articulate in a phone call from his hospital bed, Bret Michaels tells People magazine he’s “lucky to be alive.”

The rocker is seen in one photo – taken by his girlfriend Kristi Gibson – in the ICU still wearing his trademark bandanna on his head.

He recalls that he was lying on the couch on April 21 when he felt pain. “I thought someone shot me in the back of the head like a burglar.” The Celebrity Apprentice contestant says the hemorrhage “sounded like a handgun, like it literally popped.” He explains: “It made my mind go almost blank. My neck tensed up. I couldn’t move my head at all.”

Michaels said he began pacing his living room, then asked Gibson to take him to the emergency room. “I knew I was slurring my words, and I was like ‘OK, this isn’t a headache. There’s something really bad happening,'” he said.

Michaels remembers asking an emergency room doctor if he was going to die, and if he had a chance to survive, he didn’t want his two daughters, Raine Elizabeth, 9, and Jorja Bleu, 5, “to see me in this condition.”

Now in a physical rehab facility on the road to a full recovery, Michaels says, “It just wasn’t my time yet. I really believe that.”